


The Devil and the Details

by anneapocalypse



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 03:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5990656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a long week for both Piper and Ellie, and Ellie decides they could both use a night out... even if it doesn't take their minds off things completely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil and the Details

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Fallout Kink Meme](http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/6855.html?thread=18328775#t18328775).

“Extra spicy,” Ellie tells Takahashi. She squeezes Piper’s hand, and winks at her. “For hers, too.”  
  
Takahashi whirrs hospitably and turns back to his soup pot. Piper swivels a little on her stool, one way and the other, her face bright with a smile Ellie hasn’t seen in some time.  
  
Piper really needed this evening out. Hell, they both did. For Piper, every time she drops a heavy article, things get chilly for her in the city. Chilly if not openly hostile. Piper cracks jokes about it, all of it—the dirty looks, the people who won’t speak to her, the merchants who refuse to sell to her for fear of falling afoul of the Mayor, the names muttered by passers shoving by her in a crowd. The notes slipped under her door. “Never thought a reporter could consider herself a success until someone had threatened her life!” Piper quips, and keeps on smiling.   
  
With the latest issue of the _Publick_ it’s worse than ever. Ellie tries not to fret about it—Piper tells her over and over, she locks her door, she carries a pistol, and it’s not as though she can’t handle herself. But it wears on Piper, even if she doesn’t like to show it.  
  
For Ellie’s part, the boss has been out on a case for nearly a week and she’s been taking all his calls and logging every case request, in addition to her usual bookkeeping and filing. It’s meant extra hours every night this week. Nick’s a good boss, pays time-and-a-half over forty, slips her a bonus here and there when her keen eye for detail helps crack a tough case, and there’s really no one in the Commonwealth Ellie would rather put in overtime for. Still, she’s tired, and the work shows no signs of letting up, so today, she locked up at 5 PM and walked down to the _Publick_ and knocked on Piper’s door.  
  
  
  
“Itadakimas,” Piper declares, diving into her noodles, the popular beef dish they call _Ramen Brahmin_. “Hoo. This has some kick, Takahashi. Who’s gettin’ you the good stuff?”  
  
"Nan-ni shimasu-ka?" Takahashi returns inscrutably, stirring blithely at the broth pot with a big metal spoon grasped in deft pincers.  
  
“Bet it’s one of those new farming co-ops you hear about springing up everywhere,” Ellie muses, lifting a slab of roast brahmin to her mouth with her chopsticks. “Mmm. Probably hothousing peppers.”  
  
Piper slurps a mouthful, a little too eagerly, splashing a drop on her collar. “Whatever they’re doing, I approve.”  
  
  
  
After dinner they walk out to the Wall, hand in hand, climb up onto the empty stage and look up at the night sky. The white stadium lights blaze above in their asymmetrical patterns. Ellie counts them sometimes, noting when another has burned out. Does the city ever replace them? she wonders idly, playing with the frayed hem of her skirt over her knees, stroking the fabric between her fingers for the soothing texture. Are there staples up the sides of those high metal posts, could somebody climb them? Would anyone be willing? And are there even enough intact bulbs out there in the Commonwealth to collect and replace the dead ones, even if they wanted to? And if not, doesn’t that mean that eventually every last light will go dark, one by one, and the night skyline of Diamond City will be forever changed?  
  
The thought doesn’t trouble her. She thinks instead of the slowly changing lightscape, how all the stars above grow brighter as the horizon darkens. It’s a clear night tonight, the sky still soft blue near the skyline, deep at its apex, the big soup ladle up there slowly stirring ‘round its northern tip.  
  
She looks to Piper, then, thinking to kiss her but Piper’s eyes aren’t on the sky. Instead, her heavy-lashed gaze turns south, toward the upper stands, and the mayor’s office. She’s got one hand to her mouth, worrying her thumbnail between her teeth.  
  
“Pipes,” Ellie says, gently.

Piper starts slightly, blinking. “Sorry.” She shakes her head. “I was miles away.”

“It’s ok.” Ellie wraps an arm around her shoulders, and Piper moves closer. Ellie rubs her fingers along the smooth leather of her shoulder, the worn seam where the threads show. “I just want you to have a nice time tonight. Relax. Not think about work, you know?”  
  
Piper laughs. “Not think about work? What’s that mean?”  
  
“I know, right?” Ellie laughs, too, but leans in to kiss Piper on the cheek. “But seriously. You needed a break.”  
  
Piper leans her head on Ellie’s shoulder while Ellie combs her fingers gently through her long, dark hair. She’s left her press hat at home, tonight. She never does that, and the gesture isn’t lost on Ellie.  
  
“It’s been rough, hasn’t it,” Ellie ventures. Piper isn’t going to stop thinking about it. Might as well talk. “Since the last article.”  
  
“It’s always like that. No. I mean. Yes. But…” Piper sighs, frustrated, and shifts to be closer, sitting hip to hip with Ellie. “I can write and write and I can’t do anything. Nothing changes. He sits up there and…” She gestures helplessly. “...and I can’t touch him. I can warn people of the danger, but I can’t stop it. I used to feel like I was changing things, with what I wrote. Now… I’m just making people scared. Making them hate me. I mean.” Her tone hardens a little, eyes narrowing with that Piper Wright determination, that ferocity Ellie loves so much. “I don’t care if they hate me. I don’t _care_. I gotta do what’s right. But…” She softens again, sounding just a little bit defeated. “I don’t know how to fix it, this time.”  
  
Ellie nods, squeezing Piper’s shoulder. Unsure of what to say.  
  
Piper turns to look at her, eyes wide and sad. “Does it bother you, too?” she asks in a small voice, smaller than Ellie’s used to hearing her.   
  
Ellie’s quiet for a long moment, thinking of how to say what she means.  
  
“It does,” she says, at last, haltingly. “I guess I just… I grew up in Goodneighbor, you know? And not Goodneighbor like it is now. Goodneighbor in the old days under Vic. You were lucky not to get jumped and quartered in the street because he didn’t like your face. McDonough…” Ellie won’t lie, even for Piper. Won’t say something out loud she isn’t sure of. “McDonough’s shit, I know. It’s just…” Her fingers have started up fidgeting again, troubling the seam on Piper’s shoulder. Piper doesn’t mind. She’s good about that. “It’s just different. It’s different for me. Doesn’t mean you’re wrong.”  
  
Piper sighs. “If I’m being honest… more than anything, I just want to know the truth.”  
  
“I know.” Ellie kisses her nose, squeezes her close. “That’s what makes you you, Piper. And I love that about you. Don’t ever change that.”  
  
Piper turns her head to look up at her again, big green eyes and dark lashes and freckles and the crooked front tooth Ellie adores when she smiles. There’s a lot she adores about Piper. But nothing so much as her relentless desire for the truth. They both deal in truths for a living—just by different means, and for different ends.  
  
Her eyes close when Piper kisses her, soft. Funny how Piper gets. She’s tough as seasoned leather on the outside, where she has to be. Out there, chin up in a crowd, weathering the threats and the insults and the distrust, like raindrops off that red trenchcoat of hers. And here, when she kisses Ellie, so soft, lashes fluttering against her cheek. Her eyes open and she smiles a little, looks up at the clear night sky thick with stars, and Ellie follows her gaze and smiles too.


End file.
